We are wanting to collect some testimonials on how the NPC community has helped your nonprofit help achieve its real world mission and organizational goals/objectives. This will help newcomers, supporters and visitors to understand the value of our community in SL and RL.

Feel free to respond to this discussion or you can post your testimonial (or comment) on the WIKI Testimonial page at:

Please join me in extending a warm welcome to our newest NPC neighbor - FasterCures. FasterCures is dedicated to saving lives by saving time. Our mission is to identify and implement global solutions to accelerate the process of discovery and clinical development of new therapies for the treatment of deadly and debilitating diseases.

Draxtor Despres has once again outdone himself with this great feature video which explains the FasterCures mission and goals for SL.

I thought I'd share with you all the recent independent evaluation that was completed about the Science through Second Life project that we ran during the last school year. The project integrated Second Life and wide range of web tools into a standards based high school science class in New York City. Among the findings:

- Students' attitudes towards science-related careers changed positively with the StSL curriculum.
- Students' self-efficacy and self-confidence in their abilities to do science-related work increased.

Do a good deed for an NPC member program (Great Strides) working hard to keep the barn doors open (IRL in MD) and pass along this info for Inauguration Accommodations on a horse farm! Full details at: http://www.postlets.com/rts/1641597 or call Terry at: 301-928-8118.

This is an interesting blog post from University Affairs about the perceived ups and downs of Second Life as discovered by Loyalist College, the first Canadian college to have a presence in Second Life. The post cites the learning curve to truly understand SL and computer hardware requirements as drawbacks to educating in the virtual world. The college does believe that SL offers the most opportunities for educators.

We started tracking traffic on the nonprofitcommons on March 20th, 2007. It was a trickle at first--10 or 12 visitors a day. I thought it might be of interest to give an overview of what we look like as a community. How many of us have come? What have we been using? How long do we stay?

A couple of weeks back, I started doing an analysis of the past two years. I thought it would be interesting give a brief over view of traffic and where that traffic has come from.